In recent years, various types of stores, including particularly grocery stores, have been packing articles purchased by their customers in strong, tissue-like plastic sacks which are removed by check-out or packing clerks from several different types of racks, such as those illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,454,166, issued to M. V. Dinges on Jul. 8, 1969, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,378, issued to Baxley et al. on Jun. 30, 1987. The quantity of these sacks which may be dispensed by a single chain grocery store is tremendous. A single customer purchasing food for a family may easily come home with six to ten of these sacks while making a grocery shopping trip only once a week. After the purchased items are removed from the sacks, the wife or other householder who has made the purchases is then confronted with the problem of what to do with the empty sacks. Prior to 1988, and even since that time, countless grocery store purchasers have either crumpled up the sacks and disposed of them in trash containers, or stuffed them in a drawer or closet shelf for possible future re-use. After a while, the drawer may become packed with these bags and, should one be needed for reuse, when an effort is made to retrieve a single bag from the drawer, usually several bags will be found loosely connected and come out together so that it is then necessary to push the unwanted bags back in the overcrowded drawer.
Some attention was given to what to do about the accumulation of such plastic shopping sacks by the patentee of Patent No. 5,042,687, which issued Aug. 27, 1991, to The Bag-Saver International, Inc. of Ontario, Canada, as assignee of Thomas McKinley. While the shopping bag dispenser described and claimed in this last mentioned patent has been directed to attacking the problem of what to do with loose and untidy plastic bags and their reuse, the dispenser shown in that patent requires vertical slots, preferably above the horizontal dispensing slot in order to enable the sacks to be dispensed. In addition, because the horizontal dispensing slot is located above the floor of the container, it is believed that not infrequently, more than one sack may exit the horizontal slot when an effort is made to retrieve bags through the horizontal slot. In addition, it appears that the device of the McKinley patent contemplates the insertion of one's finger into the horizontal slot in order to remove the sacks from the container. It should also be noted that no particular means is suggested in the McKinley patent for compressing the bags in the container so that they may be easily dispensed, and that means are provided to effect a ratcheting of the bags which tends to prevent the bags from moving back upwardly after they may have been pushed downwardly by a hand or some object.